Primary Wonder …

Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber
along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing
their colored clothes; cap and bells.

And then
once more the quiet mystery
is present to me, the throng’s clamor
recedes: the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all,
let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,
rather than void: and that, O Lord,
Creator, Hallowed One, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.
— Denise Levertov (“Primary Wonder”) from The Stream & the Sapphire: Selected Poems on Religious Themes

The hardest part of my direct experience of the Mystery, the part my mind argues with most, is the all-inclusiveness of the Presence. Nothing excluded, no thought or act or feeling or being not included. My mind can`t make sense of it- surely compassion is better than cruelty, surely some thoughts and feelings cultivate compassion. And yet, when-by grace (it cannot be earned) – that door opens and all that I identify with drops away an I am held, and yet also the holder … I get that this Presence, the Sacred Wholeness that is what we are and yet more than the sum of all that is … can hold it all, excludes nothing. And that makes me smile …
— Oriah Mountain Dreamer is the author of The Dance: Moving to the Deep Rhythms of Your Life

Even your darkest secrets, the things that make us cringe a little – do you think the sacred presence is not large enough to include these? How small our notion of God is. How our ideas fail to even guess at the depth of the passion the Beloved feels for us. Open your eyes. See, there is nothing here but you and the Beloved and no real separation between these two.
— Oriah Mountain Dreamer from The Call: Discovering Why You Are Here

“Help us to find God.”
“No one can help you there.”
“Why not?”
“For the same reason that no one can help the fish to find the ocean.”
— Anthony de Mello from One Minute Wisdom

The fruit of prayer is a deepening of faith.
The fruit of faith is love,
and the fruit of love is service.
But to be able to pray we need silence; silence of the heart.
And if we don't have that silence, we don't know how to pray.
— Mother Teresa from Where There Is Love, There Is God

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

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Let me seek, then, the gift of silence, and poverty, and solitude, where everything I touch is turned into prayer: where the sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer, for God is in all.
— Thomas Merton from Thoughts In Solitude

We live in a society that worships independence yet deeply fears alienation: our era is sped-up and overconnected ... Life's creative solutions require alonetime. Solitude is required for the unconscious to process and unravel problems. Others inspire us, information feeds us, practice improves our performance, but we need quiet time to figure things out, to emerge with new discoveries, to unearth original answers.
— Ester Buchholz from The Call Of Solitude: Alonetime In A World Of Attachment